"The State of Israel ... will ensure complete equality of social and political
rights of all its inhabitants irrespective of religion ... it will guarantee freedom
of religion and conscience." - May 1948)

The Justices’ comments during the hearing provide a basis for hope

Civil Burial in Israel – If You Will It, It Is No Dream

In a petition heard in the Supreme Court last week, Hiddush - For Religious Freedom and Equality demanded that the Ministry of Religious Services and the Israel Lands Authority allow an immediately available option for civil burial to the public, in agricultural localities (kibbutzim and moshavim), at least temporarily, until a full and permanent solution is provided.

In 1996, the Knesset enacted "The Right to Alternative Civil Burial Law," which gives all Israeli citizens the right to civil burial according to their personal worldviews. The law places responsibility on the Minister of Religious Services to implement its provisions and establish civil cemeteries throughout the country. 25 years have passed since then, and the majority of Israel’s population is still deprived of the ability to exercise its right to be buried in accordance with secular or non-Orthodox religious views at a reasonable distance from their place of residence, as mandated by the law.

In a petition heard in the Supreme Court last week, Hiddush - For Religious Freedom and Equality demanded that the Ministry of Religious Services and the Israel Lands Authority allow an immediately available option for civil burial to the public, in agricultural localities (kibbutzim and moshavim), at least temporarily, until a full and permanent solution is provided. The Justices’ comments during the hearing provide a basis for hope that Hiddush’s petition will finally shake up the government establishment, such that it abides by its obligation to provide the public with a solution, instead of its endless excuses and delays.

There is currently no civil burial available to most Israeli residents – not for the residents of Jerusalem, nor for most residents of metropolitan Tel Aviv region, and many other localities, big and small. A conservative calculation indicates that, in the 25 years since the law was enacted, 100,000 Israelis were denied their legislated right to be buried according to their worldviews and ways of life, in a non-Orthodox manner. For instance, the late Ronnie Peterson case. After 30 years of living in Israel with his Israeli wife and children, and having made a significant contribution to Israeli culture, there was no place in Israel to lay him to rest because he was not “properly” Jewish. It required high-level intervention to find a burial solution for him, at odds with his lifestyle and outlook, in a Catholic cemetery. Many other families find themselves dealing with the distress and pain of having religious-Orthodox ceremonies forced upon them and their loved ones, against their will, at the most difficult moments of their lives.

In Israel, it is not possible to obtain land or a license for commercial burial, and therefore entrepreneurs are blocked from providing this service. Given the high development costs of land in Israel, it is not economically feasible to establish a new civil cemetery without government funding. The Ministry of Religious Services, which has allocated hundreds of millions of shekels to religious-Orthodox burial projects, has ensured for many years that civil burials do not receive sufficient budgets. On the other hand, the state did not hesitate to resolutely take action via court orders against kibbutzim and moshavim that provided this service (without a legal permit, please note) even for those who are not local residents, thus blocking this channel for civil burial without providing an alternative.

Those who benefit from this situation are precisely the Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox entities that currently run the burial entities throughout most of the country. They are the ones that the ultra-Orthodox-led Ministry of Religious Services granted most civil burial permits to date. These entities have operated religious burial for many years and have accumulated considerable financial reserves by selling lots. They are now gaining control over civil burial, courtesy of the Ministry, enabling them to perpetuate their monopoly, preventing competition and blocking religious pluralism.

The qualifications required for membership in the organization include being male, Jewish, and religiously observant. The authority deciding its religious matters is the Chief Rabbinate!

Civil burial plans in Metropolitan Tel Aviv illustrate this well. In June 2000, the government decided to allocate 10% of the designated main cemetery serving this region for civil burial; but only in 2018[!] did the Ministry of Religious Services approve a license for civil burial there. It was granted to "The Burial Society of the Chief Rabbinate and the Religious Council of Tel Aviv," although according to their bylaws, the organization’s purpose is to engage "in burial of the dead, according to the Shulkhan Arukh (the primary Orthodox code of law)." The qualifications required for membership in the organization include being male, Jewish, and religiously observant. The authority deciding its religious matters is the Chief Rabbinate! Also of note is that partial grants to promote 11 civil burial projects were also approved for various localities. However, as of March 2020, not a single shekel was actually transferred to any of these projects.

There is a solution today, which does not require changing national zoning, prolonged allocation processes, land development, or subsidies. All one would have to do is follow the government decision of 2004 to re-enable civil burial in agricultural localities. In Israel there are hundreds of kibbutzim and moshavim, and most of them have burial plots that already provide civil burial for local residents. According to our review, some of them would be willing to make this solution available to the public, even under the same financial conditions as those offered by the Orthodox burial societies and sanctioned by the State. Nevertheless, and not surprisingly, the relevant government authorities were not even willing to consider this route.

In 2019, after a lengthy and fruitless correspondence, Hiddush – For Religious Freedom and Equality submitted a petition to the Supreme Court. The state, as expected, asked the Court to dismiss the petition. Its representatives argued that this is not, God forbid, because of any ill will, but it just isn't possible to act differently or more quickly than the way they have been operating.

At the Supreme Court hearing last week, we were happy to hear the Justices’ comments that made it clear that the State's position did not convince them and does not satisfactorily address the State’s principle failure to make a civil burial alternative available to the public, as required by law, for all these years. The State representative was required to update the Court again as to the steps that are being taken while bearing in mind the Justices’ comments. Although no ruling has been made yet on the petition, the panel of Supreme Court Justices seems to have understood the main point of the petition – that the only thing preventing civil burial is the reluctance and inaction of the State authorities.

Hiddush has also worked in the field of alternatives to Orthodox burial in the past, when it successfully presented a petition against the IDF, demanding that military regulations be amended to allow bereaved families to opt for secular or non-Orthodox military burials. In the current litigation Hiddush expanded its scope to the entire country: Even if supposedly complex bureaucratic processes prevented establishing civil cemeteries for the last 25 years since the law required it, the state can readily provide an interim solution – the same one that worked in the past and could be reinstated tomorrow morning, should the authorities only internalize that the principles of freedom of religion and conscience are not merely theoretical, but are rather real and obligatory.